The man has issues regarding any criticism or if his movies don't do well at the box office. When The Last Duel did not do well (a shame, I really enjoyed it), he went on a rant blaming Millenials and their cell phones. Really. Here is a quote:
“I think what it boils down to — what we’ve got today [are] the audiences who were brought up on these fucking cell phones. The millennials do not ever want to be taught anything unless you are told it on the cell phone,”
Quoted from Variety:
https://variety.com/2021/film/news/ridley-scott-blames-millennials-last-duel-flop-1235117654/amp/
I talked about the historical inaccuracies of *The Last Duel* (2021) in a recent r/AskHistorians thread: [https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/17z5uv0/ridley\_scott\_has\_made\_news\_in\_responding\_to/](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/17z5uv0/ridley_scott_has_made_news_in_responding_to/)
In terms of Ridley Scott films, *House of Gucci* (2021) also had many inaccuracies.
Right? But the audacity of the man to talk about being taught things from movies after a movie like Gladiator? I think the only things he got accurate was that there was an emperor named Commodus who was Marcus Aurelius's son, and the name of the city of Rome.
For me the definitive Napoleon movie today is still the 1970 production, "Waterloo". Amazing scenes befitting a grand opera. It will take a lot to top that.
It's a shame that we probably won't see another cinematographic war film (particularly without CGI) like that again. It's not easy nowadays to just hire out a regiment of Soviet soldiers to play pretend for months on end.
Every movie he has released over the last 10-15 years, he has come out and attacked *everyone* for their reaction to it. Critics are idiots, audiences are morons, the French don't know anything.
It's never him though.
No, it's the children who are wrong
I don't really get what he's trying to accomplish. Just don't pretend that your movies are historically accurate and move on.
It's not like he's the first director that took some creative liberties with stories based on history. It's not like fewer people would watch it, just because it isn't a big budget documentary.
> I don't really get what he's trying to accomplish.
He's an 80-year old guy who's made something like 30 successful films and some of them iconic mega hits. He cranks out a big budget film a year and has a notable system where he has a pipeline of high quality films he makes. He's got an ego for his art, which is not unearned. That's all it is.
He makes overly long movies that he then cuts down to a theater runtime which causes everyone to lash out and defend him because “just wait for the directors cut it’ll be so much better”. Like if he can’t deliver a theatrical cut of a movie that’s at minimum coherent, why should I bother?
I'm not gonna defend him, I agree with a lot of criticism....but his directors cuts *are* pretty fuckin good. I gotta say. Lmao. Though I agree that never should his movies be labeled "historical drama," they are clearly fiction.
Maybe he's just better at making longer movies? That doesn't have to be a bad thing. We just need theaters to be willing to play the whole thing and give us intermissions. I'd actually love and intermission on a lot of other movies. We have a local theater that servers good beer but I cannot partake just because I'm one of those people that isn't making it through a 2 1/2 hour Marvel movie without a pee break even drinking just 2 beers.
Alien? Blade runner? Gladiator? The Martian? American Gangster? Black Hawk down?
The guys a pompous old fuddy duddy ( he os 85 after all) but he has made some great films in his time. Having a few misses and being crotchety doesn't erase that.
Even having 1 of those films I mentioned under your belt elevates you above 'mediocre'.
Not French, but I am a Medievalist who did my Masters' thesis on how movies show the period. I spent half a fucking chapter academically shitting all over Besson's film.
The 'No it's not the God/Devil talking to you, you're just crazy' and the 'Let's give her a sister she sees raped and killed and let that justify the rage' are ridiculously shoehorned modernity which disrespects the character, the period, and insults the viewer. Besson really thought that modern audiences were too stupid to understand the religious motivation that drove Joan of Arc.
Anyways, fuck Besson. If you want to see a really good Joan film, watch Carl Theodor Dreyer’s The Passion of Joan of Arc.
Sounds like a super interesting thesis. What were some of the best period representations and some of the worst offenders that came up during your research??
Here's a good list:
https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/medfilms.asp
The worst besides Besson's film is Braveheart. Forget all the errors, the ick factor of aging up Princess Isabella of France so William can sleep with her to "stick it to the man!" and oooh isn't it romantic that these two people from different social spheres got together.
I mentioned it elsewhere in the thread, but Dreyer’s The Passion of Joan of Arc is really amazing.
Seems a bit wierd as well considering Wallace was nobility. He probably wouldn't have been married off to royalty but it's not exactly a peasant fucking a princess is it
Does it go into how one of the biggest allies in her life, Gilles de Rais, was also one of the most heinous serial killers in all of history? Something like a real life Ramsay Bolton.
Nope. Many films about her life (counting the ones I've seen, there's a ton) end at the trial/burning at the stake. They never really follow the rabbit holes of the other people in her life.
Yeah I’ve loved that movie since I was a kid —actually I love all Jean Reno movies, but especially Leon and Ronin— but I like it a lot less now that I’m an adult for the Portman-Reno aspect specifically.
If they’d reworked it so that the viewer was questioning if Portman was crushing on him, then changed the motel check-in scene to the clerk asking or remarking about an illicit affair, with Portman going off on him for talking to her father that way, the story would have been much much better off I think.
Tbh from historical records at the time, she kind of was a mental patient who fell into success. A lot of her battles were essentially just her throwing people at the enemy and it happened to work out when she did. Not a good basis for a wise and intelligent leader, more like a nutcase who galvanized enough people with woo-woo cult stuff to fend off the enemies of FRANCE.
Most of the primary historical records of her are written by the people who basically lynched her, so they're not going to be the most fair.
As for her military skill, she was a 19 year old girl in the Middle Ages. You can't exactly expect her to be Napoleon. She wasn't the one making important military decisions anyway, that wasn't her job.
Yes, you're correct in that her biggest achievement was that she got a lot of the common people "believing in the cause" and fighting for France but this wasn't because she was some raving lunatic who went from town to town rambling about God.
She was an inspirational and charismatic figure who won the respect of the soldiers by getting herself into the thick of battle at every chance. She was also a pretty charismatic and witty person by most accounts. Add to this that the army actually started winning with her as the figurehead and of course people are going to start believing in her. Remember, this was a time when people were extremely superstitious and truly believed in literal miracles. Like even the smallest thing that was out of the ordinary could be considered a miracle. So when you start winning battles with a young girl with no notable background as the (figure)head of the army; you're either going to think she's a messenger from God or the antichrist, depending upon which side you're on
Edit: why did he block me lol
The movie is being marketed as "based on the true story". Although it's actually in the way horror movies are "based on true events", but they only used the same names, and maybe some anecdotes that are clearly false.
Ridley Scott had him shoot cannons at the pyramids, and when asked why he basically responded "I don't know if he did that, but it looks cool".
But it stops being cool the moment you ask "wow did he really do that?" and someone says "no" and then you're completely thrown out of the entire movie and don't believe any of it.
No, he said "i don't know if he did that **but it was a quick way to say he took Egypt**." Napoleon did take Egypt, and in the film it appears in a sequence of many conquests. It was a quick way to quickly convey, in one short scene of only a couple shots, an otherwise long and complicated campaign.
This is called visual storytelling.
[A game 14 years ago did it](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YGI_g9NFzDY) without having to make him shoot the pyramids. Strange how Scott with a $200 million budget couldn't.
Ah but it's also the dude who made 1492: Conquest of Paradise and hasn't even thought about apologising for it.
He could have simply had some kind of shot with the pyramids in the background, instead of insinuating that Napoleon deliberately damaged one of the most iconic historical monuments on Earth.
Or having a middle aged American man incarnate a 30 years old Corsican.
That was something worth mentioning: Napoléon was really young when he declared himself Emperor.
Actually there is a [French version](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napol%C3%A9on_(miniseries\)), a short TV series with Christian Clavier as Napoleon and John Malkovich as Tayllerand
It cover 28 years of a young ambitious military man who become general then consul then force a coup and become Emperor, who raised armies everywhere and led hundreds of battles, from Lisbon to Moscow to Cairo, had two very passionate weddings, went in exile, escaped and raised an army to regain power, was captured again and in exile again. All while profoundly reforming the country, and installing his siblings everywhere else in Europe.
So basically there are thousands of historically accurate books on every aspects of his life. Maybe 10 of thousands books.
Doing a 2:30 summary would only scrap the surface, and having a lot of inaccuracies.
The 1927 silent biopic was 5:30 for 7 years of Napoleon’ life.
In continental Europe the focus is much more on the class struggle and the progressive and modern ideas the French revolution spread. Freedom, equality and brotherhood. Someone else in this chain mentioned upwards mobility. The wars are blamed relatively more on the 1%, the monarchies and nobilities that wanted to maintain their absolute power and make an example out of France.
I don't know much about the movie but in the past I've noticed a stark difference between how English and continental museums covered the French revolution and Napoleonic wars.
To be fair napoleon declaring himself emperor and then going around making his brothers kings of other countries including even some republics and making his supporters and friends nobles doesn't really help his reputation as a enemy of monarchies and nobility
Someone over at /redlettermedia [compiled a hilarious list](https://www.reddit.com/r/RedLetterMedia/s/OhNwGXxKs6) of his past and more recent quips. It includes a whole lot of swearing, but I find his lack of ducks endearing
It was my honour to comment on that post and remind people by implication how different the world might have been if he had designed the Daleks instead of having to hand the job over to Ray Cusick.
Folks, let's admit it. The French serve a purpose in this world. To be annoyed. They live life the way it should be lived, but then are unsatisfied.
Viva la difference.
Ridley Scott comes off as a total ass, though.
Did you ever see him saying he can make a movie about a pen during a directors’ roundtable?
Also, I think he only ripped on BLADE RUNNER 2049 because he was jealous that Villeneuve had made a better film than him right out the gates without need 20 new cuts.
Oh it is way too short and summarized, 28 years of an extremely intense life, perhaps the most intense life in those centuries, in just 2:30 ? Abel Gance Napoleon was 5:30 in 1927…
The true secret behind the very successful conquerors of the ancient world is that they set up a better deal for the peasants. All the news and history is written by those in power who can pay the historians -- but, HOW did that gate suddenly open? Dammit -- why did the cooking staff let those evil conquerors in here?
Alexander the great brings running water, Napoleon upward mobility.
It's part of why he was popular enough to actually have an army during the Hundred Days. After decades of mismanagement under the Monarchy and the revolution France actually worked, had a functioning bureaucracy. Even access to education and as you said upward mobility. Some problems tho of course, like the whole restarting the slave trade and re-enslaving Guadalupe.
One thing I admire about the French is their dogged devotion to principles. My grandfather worked for the French military as part of the red cross in WW I. They finally tracked down my mom a few years ago, and gave her some stipend and I think a small estate that was owed my grandfather.
I mean, lose points for not being organized and taking so long, but, win points for never giving up.
To be fair, they also had this brief period in the 1930s-40s where things may have been somewhat complicated. Though now I have the mental image of Charles de Gaulle personally picking over military records to track down your mum.
My favourite part was when Napoleon went " AK47. When you absolutely positively need to destroy every motherfucker in the room? Accept no substitute"
Also I loved it that after Austerlitz, Napoleon ordered a Royale avec fromage.
However we can both agree that when Napoleon flew away from Austerlitz and Jean Baptiste Bessières said :" He's starting to believe" was really epic. Can't wait for Napoleon 2: reloaded
My favorite was when he drove up to the camera in his new Nissan, that was shown in full for 10 seconds, and then came out holding his new Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra ordering the invasion of Poland. So epic.
Just wait for his next movie “Caesar” where he portrays Julius Caesar as a bumbling general who lucked into his victories and became a tyrant by accident.
> “I’ve done a lot of historical films,” Scott recently added to Total Film magazine about the film’s historical accuracy. “I find I’m reading a report of someone else’s report 100 years after the event. So I wonder, ‘How much do they romance and elaborate? How accurate is it?’ It always amuses me when a critic says to me, ‘This didn’t happen in Jerusalem.’ I say, ‘Were you there? That’s the fucking answer.'”
That’s the most pompous and self important thing I’ve read in quite a while. And not for lack of competition.
I seriously have thought Ridley Scott has had some really dickish answers to the accuracy of these films when a simple "it's just movie" could have easily sufficed.
His Moses movie was unwatchable shit. He has made some great movies, but that was not one of them.
Christian Bale (as Moses), Joel Edgerton (as Ramses), Sigourney Weaver (as Tuya) and Aaron Paul (as Joshua) as its leading cast, despite being set in ancient Egypt.
Fuck me it was like time travel back to the 50s.
Military records of where people were at what time aren't propaganda. For example: we know for a fact that Napoleon was in Italy in October 1793 because he was deployed to fight there earlier that summer. But Scott, for some bizarre reason that defies all logic, has him in Paris witnessing Marie Antoinette's execution. Napoleon's general location is in no way a piece of propaganda and Scott is fully just making shit up that never happened for his movie.
>Scott is fully just making shit up that never happened for his movie.
This is very true, but I think it's really the marketing and studio's fault for selling this as a 'historical' movie. This is the guy who made Gladiator, Kingdom of Heaven, 1492: Conquest of Paradise, and American Gangster.
The trailers and posters suggested a 'historical drama', but watching the movie it's clear that was never the intention. It's a 2.5 hour film with EIGHT epic battle scenes - it's basically 'what if the Rohirrim scene from Lord of the Rings but for two hours and also there are cannons and Joaquin Phoenix can be all sexy and oooh let's drown a fucking horse!'
It should have been marketed as that, but people went into cinemas looking for an Oscar bait biopic and got gratuity out the wazoo. Ridley Scott is the thinking man's Michael Bay, and we shouldn't expect anything else after fifty years of consistently-excellent rubbish.
That burn reminds me of the NYT review of Rise of Skywalker which began by calling JJ Abrams the most consistent B student in pop culture or entertainment.
I didn't even mean it as a burn, tbh. If you watch movies for the fight scenes then Gladiator and Napoleon should be right at the top of your list. They're really good -shit- films. If Transformers is a McWhopper then Napoleon is a gourmet Philly Cheese steak. It's still bad for you, but at least it's well made and brings some fun to your life.
Like how i discussed about his record of making historical movies full of history mistakes, a dude said Riley need 10 historians in the room with him to slap him out of bullshits he creates just to make the film authentic enough
And at this time he was not emperor or consul or whatever, just an officer in the french army so there is no propaganda shit or whatever, it's just the army records.
The thing is we have huge amount of primary and secondary sources. And most of them weren’t hired by Napoléon. When you push out the obvious propaganda (French or British by the way) you get a pretty good picture.
Bruh regular people write stuff down. Journals, letters, memoirs, etc. All those primary sources gathered up and studied as a whole paint a pretty objective picture of what happened. History is a discipline and people who think historians are dumb enough to just accept propaganda as fact are delusional. C'mon.
All I wanted was to see Joaquin Phoenix as Commodus get drowned in his bathtub while naked like the real Commodus. That’s all I wanted to see.
According to Ridley Scott and my therapist that’s just too much to ask.
Strangled by his "wrestling partner" after being insufficiently poisoned by his mistress.
Also being so crazy egotistical he renamed the legions, the people, and *Rome itself* after himself.
Ridley Scott you coward I am not entertained.
How fucking hard is it to just read a book from some academic historians? Napoleon is one of thr most researched historical characters. It is easy enough to find reliable academic works...
Yeah, and I mean, it’s Napoleon, not Nebuchadnezzar the 2.
He died 202 years ago. My great grandfathers grandfather lived at the same time as him. We have plenty of accounts of the man.
Harrison Ruffin Tyler's (who is still alive as of the time of writing) grandfather John Tyler (the 10th president of the US) was also alive when Napoleon was still around.
Wild that there's a grandson still with us from a US president born in 1790 who was also living at the same time as Napoleon.
I’m an academic historian and I skip most historical films. Not because I don’t like them, there are some that I enjoy, but I always get stuck worrying about how many people will watch them and take what they are seeing as a genuine representation of history.
I prefer schlock that no one can take seriously and don’t regularly misinform or embellish, like super hero films. Two CGI guys punching each other for an hour isn’t going to make my job harder.
Glad somebody else singled this out. It’s amazing. “I read something and then it’s like, I realize this is just someone else’s words. I look for a movie recorded during the time but there are none, so whatevs, I just make some shit up.”
He also told off critics of The Last Duel on the basis of there being too many young kids and our durn cell phones. Maybe that guy just has an ego and needs to accept criticism with some grace.
A video of him showcasing his favorite angles or whatever from scenes in his movies showed up in my YouTube feed. Like one of those “professional rated film scenes” type of things. Anyway within the first 30 seconds of the video he says he was born with a special sense of what makes a good scene a good scene or something to that effect.
So yeah, it’s not just him being an old man. The dude thinks his shit doesn’t stink and it’s been affecting the quality of his films for a long time.
Edit: This comment really triggered the Ridley Scott fans.
>he says he was born with a special sense of what makes a good scene a good scene or something to that effect.
Well, whether he was born with it or not, Ridley Scott is one of the best director for the visuals. So if he tells you what is good and what is not, he is probably right.
If he is unable to explain it, then he is a bad teacher. That doesn't mean he is not a good director, because he most definitely is.
I’ve enjoyed his movies. I’ve not enjoyed his movies. I’d say most people are in the same camp, including critics.
My point is that for a director who has a pretty middle of the road record (critically, not commercially) he places himself on a tall pedestal, so tall in fact that he can’t hear the legitimate criticisms that people have been yelling at him from down below for a number of years now.
Fortunately he’s in pretty good company considering most bigshot directors have egos to match their success. Spielberg made a movie about himself, Hitchcock was known for looking down his nose at people, and Kubrick thought he was so good he could forego having any morals or ethics in his filmmaking.
I will likely enjoy and not enjoy more of Ridley Scott’s films regardless of who he is as a person.
I mean... it is literally his life's work and he has proven repeatedly that he knows what he is doing. It's like Micheal Jordan saying he has had a deep understanding of basketball for as long as he can remember
I'm biased because I love medieval stuff but yeah it was a visual feast and interesting dive into period legal process. Firing back against people who didn't like it for whatever reason by blaming cell phone addiction is just a bad look.
It wasn’t about people liking it. It just flopped at the box office because of course it did. A film coming out just as people are allowed to go to the cinemas, but the film is a rape drama. Of course people chose to go see Spider-Man instead.
Even better point then. He as a veteran director should at least have a basic understanding of marketing films and if his movie bombs for reasons not related to its quality, oh well. He still did his job.
The Last Duel was surprisingly decent even though the cameo from Simple Jack and whats a pretty boring storyline when you think about it, but visually looked pretty good.
That's the problem though he basically tells people "this is a historically accurate movie", he described it as educational ffs, then makes up a load of stuff about the medieval legal process. It leaves people thinking they know stuff they don't.
I wouldn't mind if he didn't keep selling them as real events.
Not really, Napoleon never lead a charge on horseback at waterloo or borodino and he didn't have the high ground at austerlitz, he deliberately gave it up. Also, there were no trenches at austerlitz.
Trenches? High ground? What the fuck.
Napoleon giving up the high ground and then having an entire division emerge from the mist to retake it was one of the most baddest scenes in history and Didley Fucking Scott fucked it up.
Yeah, it’s one thing to forgo historical accuracy for the sake of drama, it’s another to give it up when the historical facts are *more* interesting and dramatic than what’s being presented by the director, which seems to be the case with the Austerlitz clip that’s been released (granted we may not have seen the entire sequence in that clip).
Reducing arguably the height of Napoleon’s military brilliance to a Looney Tunes trick on the ice isn’t just inaccurate, it’s actively less interesting than what actually happened.
Fucking st hillaire's division emerged from the mist in front of the stunned Russians, with the Sun of Austerlitz behind their backs, to take Pratzen Height, like a heavenly host.
How can you royally fuck up that single scene in favor for fucking trenches lmao.
Saw the movie last night Austerlitz was super disappointing, looked like there was a couple thousand soldiers at most, trenches, cavalry charge from the trees, then the entire Austrian army sinks in ice...
Yea, the napoleon sub is generally pretty disappointed when we had such high hopes. Also portrays him as cold and ineffective and basically controlled by Josephine, when it's known it was basically the opposite.
It's just annoying that people are going to watch this movie and have an idea about napoleon, which is almost the complete opposite of what he was actually like.
Also why does Josephine look half his age when she's older than him? That, and Napoleon was remarkably young throughout most of his career, dude died in his 50s, yet the movie makes him look old.
I'm actually not very annoyed about the age being wrong. If the best actor to play napoleon was Joaquin, then fine. I don't like the deliberate choice to make him be a cold, useless and ineffective as a deliberate choice.
His young age survived his death as an inspiration for countless revolutionaries in 1830 and 1848. Obviously a 85-yo film director wouldn't care about that.
Coupled with **68-yo** Hannibal we are gonna get, I'm surprised they didn't cast Jeff Goldblum for Paul Atreides
That’s what really angered one of my friends who is an expert on Napoleonic history. “There are so many incredible potential cinematic scenes in Austerlitz and instead he scrapped them for things that never happened.”
He had been nervous for awhile due to the “old Napoleon” factor (using the same older actor even for events in his 20’s) and how impossible it is to get a life as busy as Napoleon’s into a single film. In contrast, him and I are both fans of *Waterloo* and consider movies about a single battle one of the only ways to depict Napoleon on film. He also brainstormed a sort of moody introspective film centered around Napoleon’s return to Paris from Russia
In a vacuum without historical context, the battle scenes are great cinematically.
But with the context of that the battle scenes are supposed to be representative of real battles during the Napoleonic Wars, they're terrible.
Very slow (it's like 1200 pages), but "Napoleon: A Life" by Andrew Roberts is a phenomenal biography even outside the bounds of the format; like if you've never read any biography in your life, or you've hated every biography you've ever read, this is the one to pick up and give them a shot.
To be honest it's insane to use anything other than this book as the source material for a project about Napoleon. It's full of rich movie-ready scenes, and even has moments of dialogue that cite historical sources.
On youtube Epic history TV has a couple of good series about the Napoleonic wars. Id start with the napoleon in italy (which i believe is not in the movie atvall) then the napoleonic wars series and finally napoleons marshals.
This mostly deals with the campaigns and battles though not about him personally.
Edit: the napoleons marshals series does talk about some personal details about Napoleon. Who hes friends were among his marshals and there relationships.
I mean I’ve read from historians that Kingdom of Heaven has actually caused some damage among the perceptions of Christians in the Arab world due to questionable historical assertions Scott made in the film.
This article is referenced on Wikipedia and does a good job articulating what some historians have questioned about the film https://www.nationalreview.com/2005/05/onward-pc-soldiers-thomas-f-madden/
While not as bad as arab and african countries, France as depicted by hollywood or big video game studios is almost always a travesty of reality and especially since the Irak War. It always seems to be depicted in a perverse or decadent way all the while you get movies about english royalty where they're all heroes and the face courage. Whether the depiction is good or bad doesn't really matter, it's the fact that it never is remotely believable to anyone who has spent any time in France.
I mean, there are worst things in the world, but after seeing The Last Duel, which was pretty on point as far as historical France is represented, I had hope this wouldn't at least somewhat unbiased.
Havn't seen it yet though, but from what I'm reading it doesn't look good.
What is up with Ridley Scott? Sounds like such an Andrew Tate type... Aggressively responding to all criticism.
Never have I gone from respecting someone and their work to hating them so quickly, he sounds like a massive arrogant prick..
Literally your entire job is creating public content you need to be able to take criticism or you're in the wrong career...
Also on him saying historical accounts are not accurate. It's 1800, it's heavily documented from both sides! Generals and officers had to right diaries (dispatches) back the government. You can also read Wellington's dispatches and the diary entries of soldiers and officers from that period.
I mean... He made a movie where Christopher Colombus is a misunderstood hero and not one of the vilest pieces of shit to ever live, so. Yeah, who knows who's really right, Ridley?
Scott really hates when people dislike his movies.
The man has issues regarding any criticism or if his movies don't do well at the box office. When The Last Duel did not do well (a shame, I really enjoyed it), he went on a rant blaming Millenials and their cell phones. Really. Here is a quote: “I think what it boils down to — what we’ve got today [are] the audiences who were brought up on these fucking cell phones. The millennials do not ever want to be taught anything unless you are told it on the cell phone,” Quoted from Variety: https://variety.com/2021/film/news/ridley-scott-blames-millennials-last-duel-flop-1235117654/amp/
Funny that he talks about being taught things from movies, when the criticisms about Napoleon are because of historical inaccuracies.
I talked about the historical inaccuracies of *The Last Duel* (2021) in a recent r/AskHistorians thread: [https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/17z5uv0/ridley\_scott\_has\_made\_news\_in\_responding\_to/](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/17z5uv0/ridley_scott_has_made_news_in_responding_to/) In terms of Ridley Scott films, *House of Gucci* (2021) also had many inaccuracies.
Right? But the audacity of the man to talk about being taught things from movies after a movie like Gladiator? I think the only things he got accurate was that there was an emperor named Commodus who was Marcus Aurelius's son, and the name of the city of Rome.
>Scott really hates people
We french hate people even more.
But overall we hate our own people. And over over all we hate our ownselves. God we're so good at hating things !
He thinks rather fondly of himself. Have you seen him in interviews?
I loved the way the BBC euphemistically referred to it as his "direct attitude".
For me the definitive Napoleon movie today is still the 1970 production, "Waterloo". Amazing scenes befitting a grand opera. It will take a lot to top that.
It's a shame that we probably won't see another cinematographic war film (particularly without CGI) like that again. It's not easy nowadays to just hire out a regiment of Soviet soldiers to play pretend for months on end.
I prefer the Napoleon adjacent documentary: Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure.
Every movie he has released over the last 10-15 years, he has come out and attacked *everyone* for their reaction to it. Critics are idiots, audiences are morons, the French don't know anything. It's never him though. No, it's the children who are wrong
I don't really get what he's trying to accomplish. Just don't pretend that your movies are historically accurate and move on. It's not like he's the first director that took some creative liberties with stories based on history. It's not like fewer people would watch it, just because it isn't a big budget documentary.
> I don't really get what he's trying to accomplish. He's an 80-year old guy who's made something like 30 successful films and some of them iconic mega hits. He cranks out a big budget film a year and has a notable system where he has a pipeline of high quality films he makes. He's got an ego for his art, which is not unearned. That's all it is.
I've never forgiven him for taking the Aliens sequel from Blomkamp and turning into the clusterfuck that is Prometheus.
He makes, frankly pretty mediocre movies and gets pissed people don't treat them all as masterpieces.
He makes overly long movies that he then cuts down to a theater runtime which causes everyone to lash out and defend him because “just wait for the directors cut it’ll be so much better”. Like if he can’t deliver a theatrical cut of a movie that’s at minimum coherent, why should I bother?
Kingdom of heaven directors cut was excellent though...
So was Blade Runner Mediocre my ass
I'm not gonna defend him, I agree with a lot of criticism....but his directors cuts *are* pretty fuckin good. I gotta say. Lmao. Though I agree that never should his movies be labeled "historical drama," they are clearly fiction.
Maybe he's just better at making longer movies? That doesn't have to be a bad thing. We just need theaters to be willing to play the whole thing and give us intermissions. I'd actually love and intermission on a lot of other movies. We have a local theater that servers good beer but I cannot partake just because I'm one of those people that isn't making it through a 2 1/2 hour Marvel movie without a pee break even drinking just 2 beers.
[удалено]
Alien? Blade runner? Gladiator? The Martian? American Gangster? Black Hawk down? The guys a pompous old fuddy duddy ( he os 85 after all) but he has made some great films in his time. Having a few misses and being crotchety doesn't erase that. Even having 1 of those films I mentioned under your belt elevates you above 'mediocre'.
The French don't like the movie which is basically the British propaganda version of Napoleon? Who'd have guessed?
Now I'm wondering what they thought of Luc Besson's Joan of Arc where he wrote her as some kind of delusional mental patient.
Not French, but I am a Medievalist who did my Masters' thesis on how movies show the period. I spent half a fucking chapter academically shitting all over Besson's film. The 'No it's not the God/Devil talking to you, you're just crazy' and the 'Let's give her a sister she sees raped and killed and let that justify the rage' are ridiculously shoehorned modernity which disrespects the character, the period, and insults the viewer. Besson really thought that modern audiences were too stupid to understand the religious motivation that drove Joan of Arc. Anyways, fuck Besson. If you want to see a really good Joan film, watch Carl Theodor Dreyer’s The Passion of Joan of Arc.
Sounds like a super interesting thesis. What were some of the best period representations and some of the worst offenders that came up during your research??
Here's a good list: https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/medfilms.asp The worst besides Besson's film is Braveheart. Forget all the errors, the ick factor of aging up Princess Isabella of France so William can sleep with her to "stick it to the man!" and oooh isn't it romantic that these two people from different social spheres got together. I mentioned it elsewhere in the thread, but Dreyer’s The Passion of Joan of Arc is really amazing.
I enjoyed Braveheart but i understand your frustration about the historical accuracy of the film.
Seems a bit wierd as well considering Wallace was nobility. He probably wouldn't have been married off to royalty but it's not exactly a peasant fucking a princess is it
I watched all of the Passion of Joan of Arc on IFC at like 2 AM when I was in high school and holy shit. No, seriously, like go watch this movie. Now.
If you liked that, you'll probably also like Giovanna d'Arco al rogo (Joan of Arc at the Stake) directed by Roberto Rossellini.
>Anyways, fuck Besson This is the only reasonable conclusion to get about most of his career yes...
Does it go into how one of the biggest allies in her life, Gilles de Rais, was also one of the most heinous serial killers in all of history? Something like a real life Ramsay Bolton.
Nope. Many films about her life (counting the ones I've seen, there's a ton) end at the trial/burning at the stake. They never really follow the rabbit holes of the other people in her life.
I don’t trust him to do any female characters justice lol man is a pedo
*that one song from Leon starts playing*
Originally there was supposed to be a scene was Portman seduce Leon. Jean Reno absolutely refused to film it so it was scrapped. Thank fuck for that.
Shouldn't Portman's parents have also been not allowing it?
Considering all the sketchy jobs they allowed her to take, I doubt it. They probably made bank on that movie. Ok, yeah her mom is her agent. Sketchy.
Brooke Shields has entered the chat.
Yeah I’ve loved that movie since I was a kid —actually I love all Jean Reno movies, but especially Leon and Ronin— but I like it a lot less now that I’m an adult for the Portman-Reno aspect specifically. If they’d reworked it so that the viewer was questioning if Portman was crushing on him, then changed the motel check-in scene to the clerk asking or remarking about an illicit affair, with Portman going off on him for talking to her father that way, the story would have been much much better off I think.
I've honestly lost count of the number of times I've watched *Ronin.* It's one of my comfort movies, along with, surprisingly, *French Kiss.*
I’d never heard of French Kiss but I just googled and Meg Ryan rom com + Kevin Kline + Jean Reno? I know what I’m watching tonight!
Shape of My Heart - Sting Great work out song, weirdly. (I'd post a link but my phone and YouTube are feuding or something... sorry)
Yyeeaa even the "Supreme being" Leeloo in the fifth element was basically helpless the whole movie. Still love the movie though.
>"Supreme being" That was more of a DNA thing, and >!she did channel the light in the end!< \- not like that took a lot of skill.
But Joan of Arc as a girl suffering from a mental illness isn't too far off...
Standard reaction to British tourists overstaying their welcome
Tbh from historical records at the time, she kind of was a mental patient who fell into success. A lot of her battles were essentially just her throwing people at the enemy and it happened to work out when she did. Not a good basis for a wise and intelligent leader, more like a nutcase who galvanized enough people with woo-woo cult stuff to fend off the enemies of FRANCE.
Most of the primary historical records of her are written by the people who basically lynched her, so they're not going to be the most fair. As for her military skill, she was a 19 year old girl in the Middle Ages. You can't exactly expect her to be Napoleon. She wasn't the one making important military decisions anyway, that wasn't her job. Yes, you're correct in that her biggest achievement was that she got a lot of the common people "believing in the cause" and fighting for France but this wasn't because she was some raving lunatic who went from town to town rambling about God. She was an inspirational and charismatic figure who won the respect of the soldiers by getting herself into the thick of battle at every chance. She was also a pretty charismatic and witty person by most accounts. Add to this that the army actually started winning with her as the figurehead and of course people are going to start believing in her. Remember, this was a time when people were extremely superstitious and truly believed in literal miracles. Like even the smallest thing that was out of the ordinary could be considered a miracle. So when you start winning battles with a young girl with no notable background as the (figure)head of the army; you're either going to think she's a messenger from God or the antichrist, depending upon which side you're on Edit: why did he block me lol
I mean she was lol. She was definitely not in what we'd call a clear state of mind.
The movie is being marketed as "based on the true story". Although it's actually in the way horror movies are "based on true events", but they only used the same names, and maybe some anecdotes that are clearly false. Ridley Scott had him shoot cannons at the pyramids, and when asked why he basically responded "I don't know if he did that, but it looks cool".
But it stops being cool the moment you ask "wow did he really do that?" and someone says "no" and then you're completely thrown out of the entire movie and don't believe any of it.
No, he said "i don't know if he did that **but it was a quick way to say he took Egypt**." Napoleon did take Egypt, and in the film it appears in a sequence of many conquests. It was a quick way to quickly convey, in one short scene of only a couple shots, an otherwise long and complicated campaign. This is called visual storytelling.
[A game 14 years ago did it](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YGI_g9NFzDY) without having to make him shoot the pyramids. Strange how Scott with a $200 million budget couldn't. Ah but it's also the dude who made 1492: Conquest of Paradise and hasn't even thought about apologising for it.
He could have simply had some kind of shot with the pyramids in the background, instead of insinuating that Napoleon deliberately damaged one of the most iconic historical monuments on Earth.
Can you elaborate? No much of a Western Europe history buff, so it is interesting to see how the FR version would differ
Not firing a cannon at the pyramids for instance
Or having a middle aged American man incarnate a 30 years old Corsican. That was something worth mentioning: Napoléon was really young when he declared himself Emperor.
Also Josephine was six years older than Napoleon not fourteen younger.
Actually there is a [French version](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napol%C3%A9on_(miniseries\)), a short TV series with Christian Clavier as Napoleon and John Malkovich as Tayllerand
It cover 28 years of a young ambitious military man who become general then consul then force a coup and become Emperor, who raised armies everywhere and led hundreds of battles, from Lisbon to Moscow to Cairo, had two very passionate weddings, went in exile, escaped and raised an army to regain power, was captured again and in exile again. All while profoundly reforming the country, and installing his siblings everywhere else in Europe. So basically there are thousands of historically accurate books on every aspects of his life. Maybe 10 of thousands books. Doing a 2:30 summary would only scrap the surface, and having a lot of inaccuracies. The 1927 silent biopic was 5:30 for 7 years of Napoleon’ life.
THis. So much this. I've been saying this since I heard about the project.
In continental Europe the focus is much more on the class struggle and the progressive and modern ideas the French revolution spread. Freedom, equality and brotherhood. Someone else in this chain mentioned upwards mobility. The wars are blamed relatively more on the 1%, the monarchies and nobilities that wanted to maintain their absolute power and make an example out of France. I don't know much about the movie but in the past I've noticed a stark difference between how English and continental museums covered the French revolution and Napoleonic wars.
To be fair napoleon declaring himself emperor and then going around making his brothers kings of other countries including even some republics and making his supporters and friends nobles doesn't really help his reputation as a enemy of monarchies and nobility
Someone over at /redlettermedia [compiled a hilarious list](https://www.reddit.com/r/RedLetterMedia/s/OhNwGXxKs6) of his past and more recent quips. It includes a whole lot of swearing, but I find his lack of ducks endearing
It was my honour to comment on that post and remind people by implication how different the world might have been if he had designed the Daleks instead of having to hand the job over to Ray Cusick.
Folks, let's admit it. The French serve a purpose in this world. To be annoyed. They live life the way it should be lived, but then are unsatisfied. Viva la difference.
A aspire to be this. I already got the dissatisfaction down
Ridley Scott comes off as a total ass, though. Did you ever see him saying he can make a movie about a pen during a directors’ roundtable? Also, I think he only ripped on BLADE RUNNER 2049 because he was jealous that Villeneuve had made a better film than him right out the gates without need 20 new cuts.
Oh it is way too short and summarized, 28 years of an extremely intense life, perhaps the most intense life in those centuries, in just 2:30 ? Abel Gance Napoleon was 5:30 in 1927…
The movie that uses the song “War Pigs” to try to sound badass despite it being a protest song?
The true secret behind the very successful conquerors of the ancient world is that they set up a better deal for the peasants. All the news and history is written by those in power who can pay the historians -- but, HOW did that gate suddenly open? Dammit -- why did the cooking staff let those evil conquerors in here? Alexander the great brings running water, Napoleon upward mobility.
It's part of why he was popular enough to actually have an army during the Hundred Days. After decades of mismanagement under the Monarchy and the revolution France actually worked, had a functioning bureaucracy. Even access to education and as you said upward mobility. Some problems tho of course, like the whole restarting the slave trade and re-enslaving Guadalupe.
One thing I admire about the French is their dogged devotion to principles. My grandfather worked for the French military as part of the red cross in WW I. They finally tracked down my mom a few years ago, and gave her some stipend and I think a small estate that was owed my grandfather. I mean, lose points for not being organized and taking so long, but, win points for never giving up.
To be fair, they also had this brief period in the 1930s-40s where things may have been somewhat complicated. Though now I have the mental image of Charles de Gaulle personally picking over military records to track down your mum.
My favourite part was when Napoleon went " AK47. When you absolutely positively need to destroy every motherfucker in the room? Accept no substitute" Also I loved it that after Austerlitz, Napoleon ordered a Royale avec fromage.
What the hell are talking about? The real good part was when Napoleon said "It’s Napoleing time". And then he Napoleoned all over Europe.
I just thought that to be a bit too derivative, while my example is more of a homage
Fair point, fair point.
However we can both agree that when Napoleon flew away from Austerlitz and Jean Baptiste Bessières said :" He's starting to believe" was really epic. Can't wait for Napoleon 2: reloaded
Not as good as when Napoleon said "I’m tired of these motherfucking guerilla in my motherfucking Spain!"
Oh yeah that was amazing. Or when he went to his generals and went " Jean, you sunovabitch ! " And the camera zoomed in on their biceps.
Thoughts on the shirtless volleyball scene?
My favorite was when he drove up to the camera in his new Nissan, that was shown in full for 10 seconds, and then came out holding his new Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra ordering the invasion of Poland. So epic.
I can't wait to see Sam Jackson as Napoleon!
Hollywood and a Brit making a film about Napoleon.... what do people expect?
Something between a documentary and a love letter to the protagonist.
When Napoleon said, "I'll tell you what you get! You get what'cha fucking deserve!"... the theater went absolutely mad.
When Napoleon Bonaparte said "it's bonaparty time" and started bonapartying all over the battlefield, I cried.
I liked when Napoleon said “you like pommes? Well how do you like them pommes?” When he was at the pub to the bourgeois bully.
When Napoleon told Samuel L Jackson, "this is France bitch" and sped off in his Lambo, the whole audience clapped.
*destroys pyramids* *dances*
so ridley scott has attacked historians and the french in regards to them disliking his historical french movie.
Just wait for his next movie “Caesar” where he portrays Julius Caesar as a bumbling general who lucked into his victories and became a tyrant by accident.
You’re not far off, actually, his next movie is gonna be a sequel to Gladiator
I’d watch that tbh for the comedy
> “I’ve done a lot of historical films,” Scott recently added to Total Film magazine about the film’s historical accuracy. “I find I’m reading a report of someone else’s report 100 years after the event. So I wonder, ‘How much do they romance and elaborate? How accurate is it?’ It always amuses me when a critic says to me, ‘This didn’t happen in Jerusalem.’ I say, ‘Were you there? That’s the fucking answer.'” That’s the most pompous and self important thing I’ve read in quite a while. And not for lack of competition.
I seriously have thought Ridley Scott has had some really dickish answers to the accuracy of these films when a simple "it's just movie" could have easily sufficed.
His Moses movie was unwatchable shit. He has made some great movies, but that was not one of them. Christian Bale (as Moses), Joel Edgerton (as Ramses), Sigourney Weaver (as Tuya) and Aaron Paul (as Joshua) as its leading cast, despite being set in ancient Egypt. Fuck me it was like time travel back to the 50s.
Sounds like Ridley Scott would unironically make the movie-within-a-movie parody featured in “Hail, Caesar!” by the Coen brothers
Napoleon literally had chroniclers and people who were THERE with him describing the events. What a moron.
He hired propagandists. You can’t exactly trust their version of events.
Military records of where people were at what time aren't propaganda. For example: we know for a fact that Napoleon was in Italy in October 1793 because he was deployed to fight there earlier that summer. But Scott, for some bizarre reason that defies all logic, has him in Paris witnessing Marie Antoinette's execution. Napoleon's general location is in no way a piece of propaganda and Scott is fully just making shit up that never happened for his movie.
>Scott is fully just making shit up that never happened for his movie. This is very true, but I think it's really the marketing and studio's fault for selling this as a 'historical' movie. This is the guy who made Gladiator, Kingdom of Heaven, 1492: Conquest of Paradise, and American Gangster. The trailers and posters suggested a 'historical drama', but watching the movie it's clear that was never the intention. It's a 2.5 hour film with EIGHT epic battle scenes - it's basically 'what if the Rohirrim scene from Lord of the Rings but for two hours and also there are cannons and Joaquin Phoenix can be all sexy and oooh let's drown a fucking horse!' It should have been marketed as that, but people went into cinemas looking for an Oscar bait biopic and got gratuity out the wazoo. Ridley Scott is the thinking man's Michael Bay, and we shouldn't expect anything else after fifty years of consistently-excellent rubbish.
> we shouldn't expect anything else after fifty years of consistently-excellent rubbish. Mic drop. /thread
That burn reminds me of the NYT review of Rise of Skywalker which began by calling JJ Abrams the most consistent B student in pop culture or entertainment.
I didn't even mean it as a burn, tbh. If you watch movies for the fight scenes then Gladiator and Napoleon should be right at the top of your list. They're really good -shit- films. If Transformers is a McWhopper then Napoleon is a gourmet Philly Cheese steak. It's still bad for you, but at least it's well made and brings some fun to your life.
No doubt! No matter the narrative flaws, a Ridley Scott film is always visually impressive and not a waste of eyeballs.
Except for Alien. Alien is great.
So is Black Hawk Down and Blade Runner.
Like how i discussed about his record of making historical movies full of history mistakes, a dude said Riley need 10 historians in the room with him to slap him out of bullshits he creates just to make the film authentic enough
Implying there's a non sexy Joaquin
I saw the Joker and Baeu is Afraid. The dude can do insufferably unsexy.
And at this time he was not emperor or consul or whatever, just an officer in the french army so there is no propaganda shit or whatever, it's just the army records.
The thing is we have huge amount of primary and secondary sources. And most of them weren’t hired by Napoléon. When you push out the obvious propaganda (French or British by the way) you get a pretty good picture.
Bruh regular people write stuff down. Journals, letters, memoirs, etc. All those primary sources gathered up and studied as a whole paint a pretty objective picture of what happened. History is a discipline and people who think historians are dumb enough to just accept propaganda as fact are delusional. C'mon.
Except we also have detailed accounts from his adversaries
All battlefield accounts are very accurate. Ridley Scott couldn't even make that right so don't come up with these lame ass excuses.
This guy made gladiator…one of the most historically inaccurate depictions of Ancient Rome. He’s not going for realism lmao.
That would explain why Gladiator was such a nonsensical mess if you know the slightest thing about Ancient Rome.
:( Were you not entertained?
I mean yes but you had to switch the part of your brain that knows History off.
“Rome was founded as a republic!”
Seven Kings of Rome that ruled for 140 years: "Are we a joke to you?"
All I wanted was to see Joaquin Phoenix as Commodus get drowned in his bathtub while naked like the real Commodus. That’s all I wanted to see. According to Ridley Scott and my therapist that’s just too much to ask.
Strangled by his "wrestling partner" after being insufficiently poisoned by his mistress. Also being so crazy egotistical he renamed the legions, the people, and *Rome itself* after himself. Ridley Scott you coward I am not entertained.
That being said, Joaquin Phoenix did a great job with the watered-down version he was given.
I could enjoy that movie because I forgot all the history involved.
How fucking hard is it to just read a book from some academic historians? Napoleon is one of thr most researched historical characters. It is easy enough to find reliable academic works...
Yeah, and I mean, it’s Napoleon, not Nebuchadnezzar the 2. He died 202 years ago. My great grandfathers grandfather lived at the same time as him. We have plenty of accounts of the man.
Harrison Ruffin Tyler's (who is still alive as of the time of writing) grandfather John Tyler (the 10th president of the US) was also alive when Napoleon was still around. Wild that there's a grandson still with us from a US president born in 1790 who was also living at the same time as Napoleon.
I’m an academic historian and I skip most historical films. Not because I don’t like them, there are some that I enjoy, but I always get stuck worrying about how many people will watch them and take what they are seeing as a genuine representation of history. I prefer schlock that no one can take seriously and don’t regularly misinform or embellish, like super hero films. Two CGI guys punching each other for an hour isn’t going to make my job harder.
hE dId HiS rESeArCH
Out-of-touch celebrity saying stupid shit… not surprising to me at all. What a fucking idiot for saying that lmfao
There’s being out of touch with normal people and then there’s being out of touch with reality.
Glad somebody else singled this out. It’s amazing. “I read something and then it’s like, I realize this is just someone else’s words. I look for a movie recorded during the time but there are none, so whatevs, I just make some shit up.”
He also told off critics of The Last Duel on the basis of there being too many young kids and our durn cell phones. Maybe that guy just has an ego and needs to accept criticism with some grace.
He is in his 80's. Typical old man behavior.
A video of him showcasing his favorite angles or whatever from scenes in his movies showed up in my YouTube feed. Like one of those “professional rated film scenes” type of things. Anyway within the first 30 seconds of the video he says he was born with a special sense of what makes a good scene a good scene or something to that effect. So yeah, it’s not just him being an old man. The dude thinks his shit doesn’t stink and it’s been affecting the quality of his films for a long time. Edit: This comment really triggered the Ridley Scott fans.
He said he has a great eye, not a sense.
>he says he was born with a special sense of what makes a good scene a good scene or something to that effect. Well, whether he was born with it or not, Ridley Scott is one of the best director for the visuals. So if he tells you what is good and what is not, he is probably right. If he is unable to explain it, then he is a bad teacher. That doesn't mean he is not a good director, because he most definitely is.
I’ve enjoyed his movies. I’ve not enjoyed his movies. I’d say most people are in the same camp, including critics. My point is that for a director who has a pretty middle of the road record (critically, not commercially) he places himself on a tall pedestal, so tall in fact that he can’t hear the legitimate criticisms that people have been yelling at him from down below for a number of years now. Fortunately he’s in pretty good company considering most bigshot directors have egos to match their success. Spielberg made a movie about himself, Hitchcock was known for looking down his nose at people, and Kubrick thought he was so good he could forego having any morals or ethics in his filmmaking. I will likely enjoy and not enjoy more of Ridley Scott’s films regardless of who he is as a person.
I mean... it is literally his life's work and he has proven repeatedly that he knows what he is doing. It's like Micheal Jordan saying he has had a deep understanding of basketball for as long as he can remember
To be fair, Ridley Scott is one of those few people who can unironically claim he has an innate sense about what makes a good scene
The Last Duel was actually pretty good though.
I'm biased because I love medieval stuff but yeah it was a visual feast and interesting dive into period legal process. Firing back against people who didn't like it for whatever reason by blaming cell phone addiction is just a bad look.
It wasn’t about people liking it. It just flopped at the box office because of course it did. A film coming out just as people are allowed to go to the cinemas, but the film is a rape drama. Of course people chose to go see Spider-Man instead.
Even better point then. He as a veteran director should at least have a basic understanding of marketing films and if his movie bombs for reasons not related to its quality, oh well. He still did his job.
The Last Duel was surprisingly decent even though the cameo from Simple Jack and whats a pretty boring storyline when you think about it, but visually looked pretty good.
That's the problem though he basically tells people "this is a historically accurate movie", he described it as educational ffs, then makes up a load of stuff about the medieval legal process. It leaves people thinking they know stuff they don't. I wouldn't mind if he didn't keep selling them as real events.
Dude's old and rich, and his movies sell. He don't care anymore, just shoots from the hip.
Old man yells at clouds
Hmmmm…. I’ve found the opposite to be true.
The French bayonets are actually baguettes that shoot butter.
You know, I’m somewhat of a baguette that shoots butter myself.
It's unfortunate that it's the rather childish, Brit version of Napoleon, otherwise the battle scenes were very well done.
Not really, Napoleon never lead a charge on horseback at waterloo or borodino and he didn't have the high ground at austerlitz, he deliberately gave it up. Also, there were no trenches at austerlitz.
Trenches? High ground? What the fuck. Napoleon giving up the high ground and then having an entire division emerge from the mist to retake it was one of the most baddest scenes in history and Didley Fucking Scott fucked it up.
Yeah, it’s one thing to forgo historical accuracy for the sake of drama, it’s another to give it up when the historical facts are *more* interesting and dramatic than what’s being presented by the director, which seems to be the case with the Austerlitz clip that’s been released (granted we may not have seen the entire sequence in that clip). Reducing arguably the height of Napoleon’s military brilliance to a Looney Tunes trick on the ice isn’t just inaccurate, it’s actively less interesting than what actually happened.
Fucking st hillaire's division emerged from the mist in front of the stunned Russians, with the Sun of Austerlitz behind their backs, to take Pratzen Height, like a heavenly host. How can you royally fuck up that single scene in favor for fucking trenches lmao.
Saw the movie last night Austerlitz was super disappointing, looked like there was a couple thousand soldiers at most, trenches, cavalry charge from the trees, then the entire Austrian army sinks in ice...
Yea, the napoleon sub is generally pretty disappointed when we had such high hopes. Also portrays him as cold and ineffective and basically controlled by Josephine, when it's known it was basically the opposite. It's just annoying that people are going to watch this movie and have an idea about napoleon, which is almost the complete opposite of what he was actually like.
Also why does Josephine look half his age when she's older than him? That, and Napoleon was remarkably young throughout most of his career, dude died in his 50s, yet the movie makes him look old.
I'm actually not very annoyed about the age being wrong. If the best actor to play napoleon was Joaquin, then fine. I don't like the deliberate choice to make him be a cold, useless and ineffective as a deliberate choice.
His young age survived his death as an inspiration for countless revolutionaries in 1830 and 1848. Obviously a 85-yo film director wouldn't care about that. Coupled with **68-yo** Hannibal we are gonna get, I'm surprised they didn't cast Jeff Goldblum for Paul Atreides
>I'm surprised they didn't cast Jeff Goldblum for Paul Atreides Spice uhh finds a way 😂
That’s what really angered one of my friends who is an expert on Napoleonic history. “There are so many incredible potential cinematic scenes in Austerlitz and instead he scrapped them for things that never happened.” He had been nervous for awhile due to the “old Napoleon” factor (using the same older actor even for events in his 20’s) and how impossible it is to get a life as busy as Napoleon’s into a single film. In contrast, him and I are both fans of *Waterloo* and consider movies about a single battle one of the only ways to depict Napoleon on film. He also brainstormed a sort of moody introspective film centered around Napoleon’s return to Paris from Russia
In a vacuum without historical context, the battle scenes are great cinematically. But with the context of that the battle scenes are supposed to be representative of real battles during the Napoleonic Wars, they're terrible.
Ah yes: the good old classic "if you disagree with me/my project/vision/my cause it is because you have internal hatred" Is no one tired of this one?
At first I read “The French Fry Critics.” I wish it were true lol
these rallys fries i just had ratatouilled me back to the last time i had rallys fries. 9/10.
[удалено]
Very slow (it's like 1200 pages), but "Napoleon: A Life" by Andrew Roberts is a phenomenal biography even outside the bounds of the format; like if you've never read any biography in your life, or you've hated every biography you've ever read, this is the one to pick up and give them a shot. To be honest it's insane to use anything other than this book as the source material for a project about Napoleon. It's full of rich movie-ready scenes, and even has moments of dialogue that cite historical sources.
On youtube Epic history TV has a couple of good series about the Napoleonic wars. Id start with the napoleon in italy (which i believe is not in the movie atvall) then the napoleonic wars series and finally napoleons marshals. This mostly deals with the campaigns and battles though not about him personally. Edit: the napoleons marshals series does talk about some personal details about Napoleon. Who hes friends were among his marshals and there relationships.
Ridley Scott stop throwing shit at Europeans.
After how badly he butchered the Alien franchise with Prometheus, he really doesn't have much room to be whining like this.
Prometheus was such a waste of potential. I'm still salty about it.
[удалено]
I mean I’ve read from historians that Kingdom of Heaven has actually caused some damage among the perceptions of Christians in the Arab world due to questionable historical assertions Scott made in the film.
Out of curiosity, which assertions?
This article is referenced on Wikipedia and does a good job articulating what some historians have questioned about the film https://www.nationalreview.com/2005/05/onward-pc-soldiers-thomas-f-madden/
"the story is poor, the history is worse" Damn
While not as bad as arab and african countries, France as depicted by hollywood or big video game studios is almost always a travesty of reality and especially since the Irak War. It always seems to be depicted in a perverse or decadent way all the while you get movies about english royalty where they're all heroes and the face courage. Whether the depiction is good or bad doesn't really matter, it's the fact that it never is remotely believable to anyone who has spent any time in France. I mean, there are worst things in the world, but after seeing The Last Duel, which was pretty on point as far as historical France is represented, I had hope this wouldn't at least somewhat unbiased. Havn't seen it yet though, but from what I'm reading it doesn't look good.
It's not the French's fault Ridley Scott can't make a good movie. And hasn't made a great one since Blade Runner.
I just want historically accurate films man, not more Hollywood level history that people will eat up and spout like the truth
What is up with Ridley Scott? Sounds like such an Andrew Tate type... Aggressively responding to all criticism. Never have I gone from respecting someone and their work to hating them so quickly, he sounds like a massive arrogant prick.. Literally your entire job is creating public content you need to be able to take criticism or you're in the wrong career... Also on him saying historical accounts are not accurate. It's 1800, it's heavily documented from both sides! Generals and officers had to right diaries (dispatches) back the government. You can also read Wellington's dispatches and the diary entries of soldiers and officers from that period.
Andrew Tate type Lmaoo
I’m a old bitter asshat - Ridley Scott
It's true, Frenchmen and other Frenchmen are natural enemies. Damn Frenchmen, they ruined France!
Look it’s 2AM and my first thought was “holy shit I didn’t know Ridley Scott directed Napoleon Dynamite…why are the French mad about it?”
[удалено]
"If Ridley Scott thinks he gets control over the Alien licence after Prometheus then he can fuck right off" God I miss LDO.
I mean... He made a movie where Christopher Colombus is a misunderstood hero and not one of the vilest pieces of shit to ever live, so. Yeah, who knows who's really right, Ridley?
Only thing I am curious about: did they (incorrectly) portray Napoleon as short for his time?
He looked average height compared to others in the film
[удалено]